Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.
If Peter Navarro is to be believed, Donald Trump only needs to look to his hand to be reminded of Australia.
Imprinted on the president’s palm is a set of dental records.
“When we were kind enough as a country to make those kind of gestures to our friends, they bit the hand that fed them and that’s not going to happen again,” he told reporters of Trump’s refusal to offer to tariff exemptions to allies like Australia.
Navarro is the kind of guy you want in your corner. He’s so loyal to Trump that he went to jail for refusing to co-operate with a congressional investigation.
Out of the clink and serving as the US president’s trade advisor, he’s been one of the most vocal critics of Australia getting the kind of exemption Malcolm Turnbull negotiated when Trump was last in power.
He wasn’t alone. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added Australia to a basket of “dumpers”, erroneously suggesting the government was subsidising cheap imports into the US that were savaging America’s domestic steel and aluminium industries.
“Mr Lutnick has simply got this wrong,” Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell offered on Thursday.
Farrell’s comments echoed a clear change in approach to handling Trump this week.
From Prime Minister Anthony Albanese down, the barbs ranged from calling Trump’s actions “unfriendly” through to a “dog act”.
While there wouldn’t be retaliation, the PM invoked the Coalition-era “Team Australia” pitch.
Albanese and his frontbench have led the way with his new Buy Australia campaign, seemingly acquiring steel that might have otherwise been exported and attaching it to their spines.
Gone is the policy of burying their heads in the sand over Trump. For now, it’s a government somewhat willing to counter him publicly.
The facts too counter Trump’s accusations about Australia.
It’s easy for his henchmen to say Australian aluminium imports into the US spiked after the 2018 exemption.
In fact, they doubled — from a whopping 1 to 2 per cent of US imports.
“We haven’t been dumping our product into the United States,” Farrell said on Thursday.
“It has simply been a trickle,” said added, pointing to Canada accounting for 70 per cent of imports into the US.
Enemy of my enemy
No world leader has been able to secure an exemption from Trump but that’s not dinting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s confidence.
Dutton (a man Trump couldn’t identify in a line-up) is so buoyed by his chances that he vowed there was “no question” that he could secure a deal with the US president.
Probably wise of him to not tell Trump that he was a cabinet minister in the government that chomped so hard that it left a mark on the president’s hand.
Not long after Turnbull landed the exemption in 2018, Dutton played a key role in ending the then Liberal leader’s prime ministership.
It’s little wonder Turnbull was this week singing the praise of Albanese for having done as much as he could to get an exemption.
A day earlier he found himself in a blistering row with the US president, who took to social media on Monday to attack Turnbull as weak and ineffective.
Turnbull himself had described Trump as “chaotic, rude, abrasive and erratic”.
Loading…
It wasn’t the only character assessment he was dishing out. In a tetchy interview with RN Breakfast, Turnbull accused the ABC of adopting a “pusillanimous” approach to criticism of Trump.
(For those playing along at home… If, like me, you had neither heard the word pusillanimous before, nor knew how to spell or say it, it’s a fancy way of saying timid).
Dutton emerges from witness protection
For a while there, it was looking like Dutton might have been placed in a witness protection program.
The opposition leader suddenly disappeared from the national consciousness after it emerged he attended not one but two political fundraisers in Sydney while his electorate braced to be battered by Tropical Cyclone Alfred-nee-Anthony.
By the time he did front up for interviews, Dutton went on the attack, dismissing Labor’s accusation that while the residents of his electorate were filling sandbags, he was in a mansion overlooking Sydney harbour at an event to fill Liberal Party coffers.
“I think people who are using that for political advantage in the time of a natural disaster, frankly, that’s a poorer reflection on them than it is on me,” he told Sky News in a phone interview.
The fundraisers weren’t the only backlash Dutton was facing this week.
On Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke alleged Dutton had played into the hands of organised criminals, who police allege were behind a fake terrorism plot.
In other good news
Labor too had headaches of its own this week.
With the PM just weeks away from calling an election, it emerged power bills are set to rise from the middle of the year.
That’s fuelling speculation the government will use its budget later this month to announce an extension of energy bill relief.
The Coalition offered its typical criticism of Labor and vowed Australians would have a chance to vote for a “real plan” to deliver cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy at the election. Curiously, the word “nuclear” was nowhere in sight.
It also emerged on Thursday that a national overhaul of text message warnings for people at threat of a disaster is still years away, with the government confirming there’s been a three-year blowout to its original plans.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland had promised it would be completed by the end of 2024. Her office now says it won’t be ready until 2027.
Granted, it’s been a busy time for the minister, implementing the ban on gambling advertising that a Labor-led committee called for in 2023.
Oh. Wait. That too has been shelved. But never fear, it’s not like gambling is as serious as smoking, which is what, according to Crikey, Albanese’s office is said to have told advocates.
Sorry Josh, it won’t work here
And lastly, Canada is getting a new prime minister.
Former central banker Mark Carney will replace Justin Trudeau despite not even having a seat in the Canadian parliament.
Trudeau’s party had been languishing in the polls but has found itself on the up after getting into a spat with Trump over trade wars.
That sound you can hear is former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who lost his seat at the last election, frantically flicking through the Australian constitution to see if he can be prime minister without having a seat in the parliament.
Unluckily for Frydenberg, you must be an elected member of the House of Representatives or Senate to be PM.
Loading
